umn of a fountain. She was in one of those
dangerous states of excitement after which the ancients awaited
disaster. That last picture of the mirror dazzled her vision again; she
saw the sunshine, smelt the perfume, heard the bird-song. How a year had
changed the scene! The house was a barrack; now down in her Maryland
peach-orchards the black muzzles of Federal cannon yawned, and under the
flickering shadows and sunshine the grimy gunners, knee-deep in grass
and dew, brushed away the startled clover-blooms, as they touched fire
to the breach. Beltran was a Rebel. Vivia was a Rebel, too! She ran
down-stairs into her little parlor overflowing with flowers. As she
walked to and fro, the silent keys of her pianoforte met her eye.
Excellent conductors. Half standing, half sitting, she awoke its voices,
and, to a rolling, silvery thunder of accompaniment, commenced
singing,--

"The lads of Kilmarnock had swords and had spears
And lang-bladed daggers to kill cavaliers,
But they shrunk to the wall and the causey left free
At one toss of the bonnet of Bonny Dundee!
So fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Saddle my horses and call up my men,
Open your west-port and let me gae free,
For it's up with the bonnets of Bonny Dundee!"

Some one in the distance, echoing the last line with an emphasis, caught
her ear in the pause. It was Ray. He had already returned, then. She
snatched the letter and sped into the kitchen, where she was sure to
find him.

Mrs. Vennard rocked in her miniature sitting-room at one side,
contentedly matching patchwork. Little Jane Vennard, her
step-daughter,--usually at work in the mills, but, since their close,
making herself busy at home, whither she had brought a cookery-book
through which Ray declared he expected to eat his way,--bustled about
from room to room. Ray sat before the fire in the kitchen and toasted
some savory morsel suspended on a string athwart the blaze.

"Where have you been, Ray?" said Vivia, approaching, with her glowing
cheeks, her sparkling eyes. "And what are you doing now?"

"Trying camp-life again," replied Ray, looking up at her in a fixed
admiration.

"I've had a letter from Beltran."

"Oh! where is he?" cried Ray.

"Beltran is in camp."

"And where?"

"Perhaps on the Rio Grande, perhaps on the Potomac."

"Do you mean to say," cried Ray, springing up, while string and all fell
into the coals, "that Beltran, my brother"--